


impossible and true

by starblessed



Series: everything you ever want, everything you ever need [6]
Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Gen, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Psychic Abilities, Surreal, ish?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 21:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: For as long as she can remember, Cleo has dreamed of the past. She dreams of her parents, their memories, a love story that took place long before she was ever more than a dream herself.Cleo sees her parents learn to rewrite the stars.





	impossible and true

**Author's Note:**

> written for a request on my [tumblr](http://abroholoselephanta.tumblr.com/): "Can you do a carlwheeler fic wherein their daughter having a vision about when they started falling in love ( basically shes like an invisible audience when her parents sang rewrite the stars) then she wakes up for bbfast feeling really happy and carlwheeler notices her strange behavior suddenly"
> 
> and i loved this idea so much that i had to run with it! cleo, will, and the entire carlyle family can be found in my family!verse but this definitely works as a standalone fic!

Cleo dreams.

She has ever since she was a little girl. All people dream, according to Mamma — dreams are just a part of being alive. The way she explained it, there are the nice dreams, there are the bad dreams, and there are the silly dreams that don’t make any sense at all. Sometimes you can go without dreams all night long. Sometimes you can forget to dream completely. Sometimes all you can do is dream.  


Cleo always dreams.  


When she closes her eyes, she sees a symphony before her eyes. Her world lights up with color; she hears songs that never existed, sees sights and sounds beyond her wildest dreams. She wonders, sometimes, if everyone dreams the way she does; vivid like a memory, close enough to touch. She wonders if her Mamma can feel the ground beneath her feet, or taste the bite of sweat and heat in the air, or bite into a candy and feel its sweetness burst over her tongue. Sometimes Cleo cannot help wondering if her dreams aren’t a bit more real than everyone else’s.

She isn’t there, of course. Whatever she’s seeing, she knows it isn’t real. When she watches Daddy and Uncle P.T. dance on bar tops and haggle over prices, they can’t see her sitting next to them. When she stands in the center of the ring as  the entire circus swirls around her, performers move past her — even straight through her — without batting an eye. At school the kids whisper spooky tales of ghosts, and that’s what Cleo feels like in her dreams — except she is alive, and has no reason to be afraid.  


The dreams are magical.

She can never hold her tongue  at breakfast the next morning. Through mouthfuls of eggs and toast, she’ll talk a mile a minute, determined to keep any detail from being left out of the vivid picture that lingers in her head. Mamma tells her to chew, while Daddy reminds her to breathe. Cleo sees the glances they exchange over her stories. Usually they’re fond and amused; sometimes, there’s a flicker of uncertainty in them, like her words recall to them a memory of their own.

They never ask, and Cleo isn’t sure she could tell them for sure. All she knows is that the dreams are very real — to her, at least.

Each one brings her closer to her parents, in a time before she was ever more than a dream herself.  


* * *

Her Daddy hunches in front of her Mamma, clinging on to her hand like a sinner in church. Mamma looks down on him, mouth set and brows furrowed, and turns away.

When Cleo imagined how her parents’ love story once played out, she never thought it would be like this. Her parents aren’t supposed to reject each other; they’re _meant to be._ Seeing her mother pull away from her father’s grip and stride across the ring is like a punch in her gut.

Her father stares after her, eyes wide and filled with pain. Cleo can hardly breathe. Everything about seeing her mother walk away from him is wrong, wrong, wrong, and she feels the hurt as deeply as her father does. It burns her insides, inflaming her whole heart, swallowing her up.  


“What are you doing?” she demands — knowing he can’t hear her, but unable to help herself. “Go after her!”  


Maybe her father can hear her after all, because his eyes suddenly grow hard with determination. He rises like a man possessed.

“You know I want you,” he says to her mother. That’s where the game begins.

Her mother tries to pull away at first, but Daddy’s determined. (Mamma always says Cleo gets her stubbornness from him; Daddy says the opposite. Cleo can see where they’re coming from.) When he pushes, she pulls. As soon as Mamma tries to step away, Daddy reels her back in again. They spin together in their own bullheaded little dance, Daddy crooning promises in Mamma’s ears. Cleo takes a step closer, coaxed in by the sweet sound of a future for just the two of them to share.

Then, suddenly, Mamma flies away.

Cleo has seen her mother in the air often enough that she isn’t swept off her own feet, not in the way Daddy seems to be. That doesn’t mean she’s not amazed to see Mamma’s silhouette twirling in the air. Silhouetted against the circus lights, she looks like something else, something that goes beyond human. She looks like an angel, shining in the sky.

Mamma tosses Daddy around almost too fast for Cleo to keep track; but Daddy won’t give up that easy. His touch is electric, and he clings to Mamma like a live wire. He refuses to let her go, even when she drags him into the air. Wherever they touch, Cleo imagines she sees sparks. When they finally embrace, it’s as if a thousand fireworks explode in the air around them.

Cleo’s imagination so often ran wild with incredible ways her parents could have fallen in love. She imagined daring escapes from flame-filled buildings, romantic kisses under stars and circus tents, chasing each other in rain or snow. Even her wildest fantasies couldn’t have conjured this, though: her parents, swinging through the air together. They are arm and arm, tangled  as they cling to each other to stay above ground. _Inseparable,_ just the way they’re meant to be. 

They soar too high to even touch they ground. They twist, they spin, in their own little dance. They fly, and Cleo flies with them. She is in the air at their sides; she is in the words they speak, the laughs that leave their lips. She feels each swoop of their stomachs, and each soar of their hearts. She is in every fragment of this moment.

Yet, somehow, there is something about this so intensely personal that even Cleo can’t touch it. This was not a moment meant to be witnessed by anyone else. This was something they shared together, away from the world. Their promises, their hopes and dreams — all of it was meant for the two of them. Looking in on this now, she feels like an intruder; a burglar climbing into a house that does not belong to her, and picking through the precious jewels of a memory.

When they finally reach the ground, something changes. The spell breaks; the magic in the air fizzles and burns out like the last echo of fireworks in a starry night. Feet back on the earth again, the world no longer seems so easy to change.

Her mother cups her father’s face, drawing close to him. When she whispers her rejection, it sounds like an apology.  
She pulls away again, leaving the refuge of strong arms behind. When she vanished into the darkness, Cleo fades away with her.

* * *

She opens her eyes breathless. Her throat is tight with tears; butterflies still hammer at the walls of her stomach.

Silently, Cleo slips out of bed. She  relishes the feeling of cold wood beneath her bare feet as she pads across her bedroom floor, steps into her slippers, and pushes her way out into the hallway. Dawn is just starting to rise over the night sky. It filters through the windows, filling their little home with early morning light.  
Her parents won’t be up for another while, at least. Cleo makes her way to the kitchen, and busies herself slicing vegetables for the morning’s breakfast. Omelettes, she decides, with lots of peppers. That’s always Mamma’s favorite.

By the time her parents stumble into the kitchen, bleary eyed, the kitchen is already bright and warm with sunlight. Cleo has juice poured, the newspaper set out on the table (featuring, of course, an ad for the Barnum Circus), and fresh flowers in a vase on the center table.

“What on earth,” Daddy drawls as he steps in to the kitchen, “is all this?”

Mamma clutches his arm. “Am I still dreaming, or is our daughter actually making us breakfast?”  


Cleo looks up from her frying pan and grins at them. “Morning. I poured your drinks already.”

“I can see that.” Normally, they’d both settle for coffee, but something about this breakfast spread must be too good to resist. They both sit down at the table, exchanging impressed glances when they think their daughter’s back is turned. Cleo sees it perfectly well, and smiles to herself. There’s nothing like a nice surprise to brighten anyone’s morning. After the dream she just had, all she really needs is to see her parents together and happy once more.

“You are ten years old,” Mamma says slowly, as Cleo slides the first omelette onto her plate. “I guess we can trust you not to poison us.”

“Sure as you can trust that Will won’t be out of bed before ten,” she replies, grinning. Daddy huffs from the other end of the table, but Mamma just shakes her head. No one is surprised that an almost-teenager loves sleeping late. If Will misses out on breakfast, it’s his own fault.

“This looks wonderful, Peanut,” Daddy declares when Cleo serves him; he catches her around the waist, and pulls her in for a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

She can’t help the laugh that bubbles from her throat. “Daddy! C’mon!”

It’s Mamma who quirks an eyebrow between bites of breakfast, fork halfway to her lips. She studies Cleo with that sharp look on her face, half-scrutinizing and half-curious. It always makes Cleo feel like her mother knows exactly what she’s thinking. “I do wonder what’s got you in such a helpful mood this morning,” Mamma remarks.

If the look in her dark eyes means anything, Mamma has an idea. Cleo grins anyways, settling down at the table between her parents. A flash of memory hits her — soaring through the air, the glimmer of a thousand stars around them. It is as real as if she’d lived it herself. Right here, right now, everything feels perfect. Her parents are together and in love; exactly how they’re supposed to be.

“I dunno,” Cleo replies, shrugging. “I just had some wonderful dreams last night.”   



End file.
